


Reunion of Trust

by Merfilly



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:43:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2311691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha leaves Steve to go find his missing partner... so she can go find hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunion of Trust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChElFi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChElFi/gifts).



When they met, Natasha was unsure, aching for a way to be true to herself, and certain it was all a trick. She listened, she gave Clint a chance to make his case, and did not kill him. She marked the moment as a debt, a chance given on faith that she promised herself she would collect on. All she did then was bide her time, waiting for the inevitable betrayal, to collect on that debt.

The betrayal never came, and she rewrote that part of her ledger. Clint had given her a chance she needed to become someone she could truly live with. She could see the debt was to him, even as she worked along side him to erase the red she'd accumulated.

He had red in his, decisions he'd made that he regretted. Some of those, Nat had learned. Others she learned he kept like hoarded treasures.

After HYDRA was revealed to her, Natasha revisited all of that in her mind, and wondered if her first assessment was the true one. Clint was supposedly on deep mission to observe the effects of Project: Insight, but what if he was out there as insurance? What if…

… Clint was Pierce's man even now? Natasha reached up to touch her necklace. She thought she knew Clint deeper than that, but Nick — Director Fury — had thought he knew Pierce.

Anyone could be wrong.

* * *

Natasha found Clint in Prague, buried deep in a low-rent area. She got inside just to find his gun in her face, his entire body a mass of half-healing cuts, wounds, and bruises.

"Give me one reason not to kill you right now," he said through gritted teeth, his eyes as dead as his face with whatever had brought him this low.

Natasha's eyes flicked from one detail to the next. His torso was bare, and she saw the pattern of several electro-stick hits burned into his chest. The wounds, from how large the makeshift bandages were, were probably poorly-extracted bullet sites. She saw the hand not holding a gun, even though she had worked with him repeatedly on dual-gun technique, was taped heavily, immobilizing three fingers.

"Your STRIKE team turned on you. When the order went out, it must have included you, because of your connections to Nick… to Fury. To me, to Rogers," she surmised. She said it slowly, keeping her tone neutral and even. 

He slipped the safety on and holstered it. "They're not a problem anymore." He pushed himself out of his rigid stance toward the bed, dropping heavily on it with a grunt. Natasha surmised his back and possibly his legs held more injuries than she had seen so far.

"It was HYDRA. They took SHIELD from inside," she said bluntly, watching him carefully. The stress in his body from the wounds could obscure any lies he made, but Natasha had to start somewhere. All of her identities were compromised, but she had begun to suspect something in her time at Rogers' side.

She was not any of her identities. She was the woman that had fallen into a partnership with Clint. She was the woman that had trusted Coulson. She was an Avenger, and she needed to have mutual trust with the rest of her team.

"Jepson admitted that when he was the last one alive. Said some interesting things about who was involved," Clint told her, turning his head slowly toward her. "I thought I knew you better, but…"

Natasha slowly nodded. "The timing on your mission was suspicious," she agreed, admitting to her own distrust. She shifted slightly, and he saw the glint of metal at her throat. "It gave me something to focus on, to find my truth."

He snorted, half-smiling. "Funny, the way we determine truth, sometimes. You said 'Nick'. You don't call him that to me very often." 

"You got beat up by SHIELD agents," she agreed, naming what had let her have a willingness to trust him.

"We both could be lying," Clint said.

"That's no different than the last decade or so," Natasha told him. She then got up to go get the med kit he'd acquired, finding it in the bathroom. She came back and just lifted an eyebrow. He sighed, and started pushing off the pants so she could tackle all of his injuries.

* * *

It took most of a week to get Clint ready to travel again, to get new papers for them both. That was why he'd been in Prague anyway; they both had solid contacts there, unconnected to SHIELD, for working that side of their needs.

"Not Stark," Clint said as they discussed where they should go.

"Hill went to Potts," Natasha said, agreeing in her own way. "Banner's not a good choice for us, though he'd try to work us in."

"First time he went big, we'd be blown," Clint replied, nodding to that. "Rogers?"

"He's going to be mobile a while, because he was involved, and because of the Winter Soldier," Natasha answered, keeping her worry out of her voice, mostly. The fact Clint squeezed her knee said she'd failed.

"We need to be close to where we can move freely, because if something else comes in against Earth as a whole, they're going to need us ready," Clint pointed out.

Natasha nodded. "Something I found while I was scanning through the data dump, Clint, leads me to believe there may be a small team still active, probably answering directly to Fury. Feel up to tracking them, using them as our monitor on the situation?" she challenged him.

He tipped his head one way and then the other, contemplating. "I wonder just who is running that. You're with me, Hill is grounded to Potts, and May…" He broke off as he saw her lips twitch into a smile. "No… she swore she'd never go back."

"Who else could it be, though, unless Fury had another hand we never figured out? Coulson was the sole exception to his style of choosing women to handle the rough stuff."

Clint nodded, then leaned in against her. "Tracking May has never been easy."

"We never enjoy easy," was the answer to that. With a goal chosen, Natasha flicked the lap off, and drew Clint in for sleep. They'd leave as soon as they could, start the hunt, but for now, they both just needed to have the quiet trust wrapping around them for one more night.


End file.
